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Long time, no post.

Greetings! A cool year or so since my last post I’ve decided to resurrect my blog once more. Why? Well, the principle reason is a forthcoming change of job and a return to working in schools – something I’m really looking forward to. When I started to work for Frog (a period of my life that I have enjoyed immensely), I simply didn’t feel it appropriate to run my blog, worrying that I couldn’t be objective if I perhaps, even unwittingly, had a commercial interest. As 2014 sees me returning to the ‘front line’, I’m very happy to pick up where I left off and commence blogging again.

So what will I be doing? Well, my new job title is ‘Learning Technologies Manager’. Why does that thrill me so much? Well it could have easily been ‘Systems Manager’ or ‘Network Manager’ as there are elements of both in the new role, but it would have put an emphasis on the type of tools I’ll be looking after and not their intended use. I’ve always felt happiest acting as an interface between technical and non-technical worlds and the new role puts me right where I want to be.

So, I ask again, what will I be doing? Naturally, there’s going to be a lot of ‘taking stock’ – I’ve been hired to provide a strategy that looks to the future but first must take stock of the present – early attention will have to focus on the basics, are we secure, do we know what we have, what everything does and where to look when it goes wrong? Once I’ve been able to audit the existing provision, identify any immediate risks and implement solutions, even temporary, to mitigate them…after THAT is when the fun starts.

I’ll be spending time in lessons, observing the use of technology and identifying gaps where technology could add value and improve the T&L experience – it’s all too easy to see the implementation of technology as the goal, it’s why so many schools refer to projects as ‘iPad Rollout’ or ‘Cloud Migration’ – those titles describe delivery milestones, not T&L benefits or improved outcomes. My focus will be on the latter, but I’ll be paying a lot of attention towards the journey and exactly how we get there.